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DreamHost Green Hosting

With so many companies out their saying they are green and listing the many different ways they adhere to that statement, I would like to start by breaking down “green”. Green is more than just a color; it has become a well known word used to describe eco-friendly businesses, products, people, and has become a symbol of environmentalism (we all know the political party by that name as well). Then there is that “carbon footprint” phrase being thrown around. So what IS a carbon footprint? Well, Wikipedia describes a carbon footprint as “the total set of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by an organization, event or product”. For simplicity of reporting, it is often expressed in terms of the amount of carbon dioxide, or its equivalent of other GHGs, emitted.”

So, we covered green, and the footprint, but what about a green business? According to Green America Today (http://www.greenamericatoday.org/) “Green businesses operate in ways that solve, rather than cause, both environmental and social problems. These businesses adopt principles, policies, and practices that improve the quality of life for their customers, their employees, communities, and the environment.”

What about green hosting? Thats what I really want to know!! Are they just green businesses? Well kind of, yes, but there is a bit more to it than that. More and more web hosting companies are finding ways to offset their carbon footprint, create their own energy, plant trees for new sign-ups, eliminate paper in the offices, switch to biodegradable cups and mugs, aluminum water bottles for the employees, offer incentives for carpooling, and more.

1 and 1 Green Hosting

There are a few ways that Green Hosting companies provide green hosting solutions to the customer. The first is with “eco-friendly” hosting, which makes up the majority of green hosting companies out there. Eco-friendly means that the particular web host purchases Renewable Energy Certificates or carbon credits which offsets their carbon footprint. Others, use things like solar or wind power to directly generate their own power. Most hosting companies, no matter which method they choose to power their servers, are using multiple methods to help the environment.

Being a green host, rather then a non-green hosting company, doesn’t necessarily make one host better than another. You should still weigh everything that is important to you and your business, such as what applications they support, the uptime, the price, whether they are eco-friendly or not, and more, before you make your decision. Green hosting, is however, a great way to add that little extra bit of help to the environment.

• The hosts we are collecting data from will soon be announced

So I never actually did that, I just activated the host list page about a week back and left it at that. A few of the major hosts that were going to setup accounts for us fell though, unfortunate but we’ll find a way to grab the info anyhow even if it means shelling out the cash to grab an account.

• The host cloud will become active soon

I eventually figured that the cloud for the hosts might be a bit too redundant and decided to just drop the idea, at least for now.

• The application detail pages will go live

Still going to do, of course, but there is quite a bit of information I haven’t gotten around to getting into the system and I have higher priorities at the moment.

• A page explaining the beta for hosting companies will be put up

I should have done this already but haven’t with any luck I’ll get it up within a week or so.

• Some code cleanup for the template engine will be implemented (done!)

This was actually a rather large rewrite of the current template class that runs the system, stripped out a few unnecessary functions and added a few more while I was at it.

• A banner rotation system will be added for the promo spot

Better then just doing that I setup an openX install for the advertising server. I now get weekly reports of all ads that get displayed, click throughs, impressions all the basics and more in a rather easy to use system. Quite nice!

So beyond all that I’ve also integrated a list of all the php extensions we check for on a host, so if I’m missing something important let me know! You’ll find that over here on the PHP Extensions We Check page. Each of the links on that page lead to another with more detailed information about that particular extension in PHP.

Finally we’ve activated three hosting companies in the current beta system, two are paid hosts and one is a free host, they are: DreamHost, GoDaddy, and 000WebHost.com. If any more hosting companies are interested in getting themselves into the system let us know!

-JJ Galvez
Black Falcon Solutions
WhereToHost Webmaster

For anyone who is interested the following additions have been made very recently.

1. 25 applications are now in the system! We’re still adding requirements but we have the main details and requirements recorded.
2. Slight changes are being made to the check file being run on our beta hosts. Extra checks for version numbers have been added.
3. The application tag cloud now randomizes the location of each application name. (Still working the CSS out for the design of each.)
4. The news feed for the right hand column is now being pulled and displayed.
5. Forums have been added to the site BUT still needs to be properly setup. Actual forums need to be added and users are needed!

Changes to come soon…

1. The hosts we are collecting data from will soon be announced
2. The host cloud will become active soon
3. The application detail pages will go live
4. A page explaining the beta for hosting companies will be put up
5. Some code cleanup for the template engine will be implemented
6. A banner rotation system will be added for the promo spot

DreamHost

It looks like DreamHost has had specials running since the first of the year! Unfortunately people who are barely hearing about this missed out on the 95%, 90%, and 80% off two year deals!

The currently running discount (as of 01/07/09) is 20% off two years of hosting by using the 227 promo code.

http://www.dreamhost.com/

So keep an eye (or two) on this blog! There is a lot going on and we hope you’ll be about hearing it from us!

-The Team @ WhereToHost.net